Catch the Rabbit (Uhvati zeca)

It's been 12 years since inseparable childhood friends Lejla & Sara have spoken, but an unexpected phone call thrusts Sara back into a world she left behind, a language she's buried, & painful memories that rise unbidden to the surface. Lejla's magnetic pull hasn't lessened despite the distance between Dublin & Bosnia or the years of silence imposed by a youthful misunderstanding, & Sara finds herself returning home, driven by curiosity & guilt. Embarking on a road trip from Bosnia to Vienna in search of Lejla's exiled brother Armin, the two travel down the rabbit hole of their shared past & question how they've arrived at their present, disparate realities. 

As their journey takes them further from their homeland, Sara realizes that she can never truly escape her past or Lejla--the two are intrinsically linked, but perpetually on opposite sides of the looking glass. As they approach their final destination, Sara contends with the chaos of their relationship. Lejla's conflicting memories of their past, further complicated by the divisions brought on by the dissolution of Yugoslavia during their childhoods, forces Sara to reckon with her own perceived reality. 

Like Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, Catch the Rabbit lays bare the intricacies of female friendship & all the ways in which two people can hurt, love, disappoint, & misunderstand one another.

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Lana Bastašić is a Yugoslav-born writer. She has published three collections of short stories, one book of children’s stories & one of poetry. Her debut novel Catch the Rabbit was shortlisted for the 2019 NIN award.